Renovating a 'Sacred Space,' Where the Remains of 9/11 Wait

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: August 29, 2006

In the most intimate and personal sense, in the sense of an ache that cannot be salved, ground zero is not really downtown.

It is instead under a big white tent, stretching from East 29th Street to East 30th Street along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, in a temporary morgue that has become a permanent shrine of its own. Inside, 13,790 human remains from 9/11 are kept in three climate-controlled, walk-in containers, against the day when DNA-based identification techniques permit a final reckoning and the remains can be returned to families.

Under the tent roof, but apart from the storage area, is a family room; a luminous, tranquil chapel where victims' relatives can gather privately to mourn.

''It was very meaningful to families who didn't have anything to bury,'' said Christine A. Ferer, one of whose roles is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's liaison to the victims' relatives. ''We tried to give them an opportunity at least to pay their respects. This was tantamount to their mausoleum, their cemetery, their sacred space.''

The space, almost four years old, was recently renovated. The altarlike fountain against the back wall, which had stopped working, was repaired. Legs were replaced on wooden benches that were warped by rainwater running down the sloping site. The gauzy theatrical scrim that forms the chapel ceiling was cleaned.

Ordinarily closed on weekends, the chapel will be kept open on Sept. 9 and 10 for the large number of visitors expected before the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack.

''For families that may not have received any remains at all, this is where they can feel closer to their loved ones,'' said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the office of the chief medical examiner, which maintains the tent, formally known as Memorial Park.

Many families qualify for that unwanted distinction. To date, the medical examiner has identified 1,598 victims, leaving 1,151 people -- or 42 percent -- yet to be accounted for. As many as 200 remains have been associated with an individual victim.

And the unending currency of the task has been underscored by the discovery in the past year of 760 remains in the former Deutsche Bank building at 130 Liberty Street, opposite ground zero, which is being prepared for demolition.

In 2001, as fall turned to winter, it became clear that a structure would be needed to shelter the 18 refrigerated trucks in which the remains were first stored. The tent was put up in a parking lot near the medical examiner's office at 520 First Avenue.

As winter turned to spring in 2002, it also became clear that family members needed more than an enclosed parking lot.

Ms. Ferer, whose husband, Neil D. Levin, was killed in the attack, set out to build a chapel by Christmas.

The $1 million project was financed in part by $300,000 from Newmark & Company (now Newmark Knight Frank), a real estate concern, which devoted a percentage of the commissions it received from relocating office tenants displaced by the attack. ''We felt we had a moral obligation to share some of the benefits,'' said Jeffrey R. Gural, Newmark's chairman then and now.

The firm 1100 Architect, which collaborated on the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City, designed the space.

''I don't know what limbo means,'' said David Piscuskas, a founder of 1100, ''but I know that family members didn't have a conventional way of grieving.'' He said the goal was a calm, neutral and nondenominational environment. The 57-by-30-foot area, on the north side of the tent, also had to be built so that it could quickly revert to use for refrigerated trucks, in case of another catastrophe. That dictated the bluestone paving.

Bluestone was also chosen for the fountain slab, set in front of a wall of birch panels. The sound of falling water was meant to mask the noisy city outside the tent, Mr. Piscuskas said, and the constant hum of the refrigerating fans on the trailers within.

The chapel's side walls, mounted on rolling scaffolds, have arrays of fluorescent lamps behind a translucent membrane. The draped scrim rises to a peak 37 feet above the floor.

Through the scrim, one can see the enormous American flag hanging over the storage area. The remains are no longer refrigerated, Ms. Borakove said, because they have been dehydrated to preserve them. They are kept in vacuum-sealed plastic pouches, with bar codes and identification numbers, on the shelves of insulated containers where temperature and humidity are kept constant.

Eventually, they will be transferred to the ground zero memorial. Ms. Ferer is a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which is trying to raise $170 million. She said she did not want the world to forget that ''the heart of the memorial is the human remains.''

''In the minds of the 9/11 families,'' Ms. Ferer added, ''it's not only sacred space, it's going to be the final resting place of their loved ones.''

Photos: The medical examiner's tent near the F.D.R. Drive, set up in December 2002, right, as a temporary morgue to store human remains. (Photo by Patrick Andrade for The New York Times); (Photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)